


You Died Before I Had Time

by zinjadu



Series: Never Put Together Entirely [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Family Issues, Gen, Hawke was done with this shit before it even started, Purple Hawke, drunken graveside rambles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-06 22:47:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12827748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: Marian finally gets to say to her father all the things she wanted to say over the years, but never had the courage to.  Shame it was after he died.





	You Died Before I Had Time

"Well Father, this is a bit of a shit pile, isn't it?" Marian asked the burning pyre that held the body of Malcolm Hawke, bottle of liquor held loosely in her hand. He was nearly ashes now, the fire burning well into the night. Mother and the twins had gone home under the watchful eye of a kindly Chantry Sister. Marian had avoided any and all such attempts at being corralled, at sympathy.

 

Instead, she had lingered, watching the fire burn as the sun set and the moon rose. It was a warm night as it was, and near to the fire, Marian felt over warm. She took another pull from the bottle, and felt the urge to kick something. Preferably the pyre, but it was probably too hot.

 

"You really fucked up this time, didn't you?" she asked the body. "Just one last job, nothing difficult, and look how you ended up Father. Dead. Fucking dead. Mother's going to be useless now, you know. And Carver, ha! He's even angrier than before. Probably going to run off and join the army to get away. I can't help Bethy, not enough of your daughter to help her, me. Got to keep her safe though, don't I? Oh yes, that's my job, isn't it Father? Keeping Bethy and the family safe?"

 

She took another drink, her short black hair falling across her face, her sharp blue eyes glaring at Malcolm's body, wishing she'd had the courage to say such things to his face. Instead, she had tried hard to be the daughter Malcolm Hawke had needed to her be, a partner in crime, a strong sword arm backing him up, and a failsafe for the family if everything went wrong.

 

Well, everything had gone wrong, and now the responsibility sat squarely on her shoulders.

 

"Never asked me what I wanted, no," Marian said, taking another drink from the bottle, her heart beating faster, an angry drum in counterpoint to her rapid voice in the night. "Never got to choose, no more than Bethy did, I suppose, or Carver, but you protected them. You kept them away from the midnight runs and the shady deals with bastards in back alleys. But me? Hah."

 

The fire was burning itself out, and if Marian thought about it, there was probably a parallel there, her anger petering out as she spoke to her father's body, as she let free everything she had refused to think about while he had been alive. Malcolm Hawke had turned his eldest daughter in to a weapon, and Marian knew it. She had known it at the time, and maybe she was the way she was because of it.

 

She didn't know, and in a rare moment of honesty, even with herself, she didn't care. Instead, she drained the last of the bottle and threw the glass against the stones of the pyre.

 

"Fuck you, Malcolm," she spat, and made her way back to the village tavern. If she was lucky, she'd score another free bottle of something out of pity and maybe she'd find someone to fuck her brains out to forget, for a little while, that as angry as she was at her father for how he had shaped her life, and for how he had died, she grieved, too.


End file.
